addressing anger when it comes up

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My parents would ignore me when I got angry or basically tell me I'm mentally ill so I got to where I wouldn't say anything until I couldn't stand it anymore and i would lash out in one fierce attack which they also ignored.
I'm posting this here in the women's forum because I have an especially hard time trusting women with my anger. I don't witness it at all in my daily life (women expressing anger) but I know it's there. I am literally sick from holding it in. I need to know for sure that I am Not crazy for feeling angry sometimes.

One example: I was recently admitted to a teacher training program and assigned to a wonderful faculty advisor who seemed really supportive of me. I told her how grateful I was that I had her as my advisor several times. I just spoke with her today and it turns out shes leaving in 3 months. It made me feel really mad that she didn't tell me sooner and even worse is I didn't feel I could express any part of that. I actually went in the other direction and said I was sorry blah blah blah. It leaves me feeling empty and hollow inside.

It feels like I go through this everyday one way or another and it's literally killing me and ruining my life. I really need to hear from other a women about a time you got really mad at somebody unrelated to you.

I can relate. Not about your parents, but about the rest of it. Women are not "allowed" to be angry, yet all people are angry sometimes. NT women often express it passive-aggressively; by being snarky, excluding people they don't like, etc. These techniques are highly social and difficult for autistic women to master. As a result, I often find myself occillating between being overly submissive and raging like a bull.

I practice detachment, which is not a solution per se, but it can help you rationalize, the time to calm down, and maybe express it differently later. Well, i'm learning to do that. There are the times when you cannot address the person, anger, rationally or emotionally, or both. What you said sounds a lot like frustration to me, and believe me it took me time to understand that.

If you are getting angry about things that don't deserve an angry response, I suggest you pick apart your thought processes.

The faculty advisor has every right to make a career move. Also, the way these things go, she shouldn't announce it to a student or subordinate before she announces formally to her own management. And, she may not have been at a point where she made up her mind earlier.

So why are you angry here? I think you're disappointed, and I think you're flustered that what seemed like a working relationship that was good for you, is going to be terminated, leaving you in a sort of limbo. You are frustrated by your own discomfort at change and how hard interpersonal relationships can be for you.

If you learn to unpack your angry thoughts, you may soon find out that other responses and other interpretations are possible.

This may seem like I'm unsympathetic, but I think what I have suggested could be very useful to you. Best of luck.

I think the OP is angry because she perceived (perhaps incorrectly) that her advisor had committed a lie by omission.

What if correctly interpreted?

When people don't listen, deal with yourself. That's the key. Always first deal with yourself. If you can't, isolate.

Initially I felt angry because I thought the faculty person had withheld that she would be leaving after the first term. It seemed like she was forthright with me about other things like taking multiple vacations which she had disclosed to me and we talked through. I trusted her. Then when I found out she was leaving, I felt disappointed and it triggered huge abandonment issues and I basically seized up at that point without asking any further questions.
I called her back later to revisit this and found out she had only very recently accepted the position and told me what her plans were promptly. I felt terrible about myself.

The troubling thing about this situation is how a simple misunderstanding triggered a lot of suffering in me and for her, too. Even if I had said something at the time as simple as "you never told me!" I feel like we could have resolved why it was coming up last minute. But I felt this huge pressure to bury that feeling under some feigned disappointment "Oh, that's a bummer!", like I couldn't even inflict "But you never told me!" on her. Like she would have come charging at me like a bull.

I have trouble fully processing emotion rapidly. I have to allow time to process the feelings before I can decide how to act on them. I suppose this leads to some missed opportunities, but it may also be a secret strength.

Esoterica, it may not be necessary to fully allow your anger to develop. In general, stepping back and analyzing the situation may be healthier. However, working through prior experiences of abandonment and helplessness can free you from triggering old feelings when a new experience comes up.

Thank you Bea Arthur. I've made some progress in therapy. It's interesting that the more I proceed, the louder the resistance from my inner critic on what I need to do to protect myself and the more I end up in terrible situations that I can't seem to drag myself out of. Part of my delay is dealing with this inner critic. I put myself in these terrifying situations because my inner critic wants me to suffer. I feel like part of my difficulty in expressing anger has to do with feeling like I don't have any right to it. Sometimes I try to stand my ground non-verbally against bullies and I end up taking all the hits anyway and walk away feeling more terrified and apprehensive.
I need some help getting out of my living situations, for example, that is totally terrifying. I live in a building that's 75% men. Sometimes the men walk around partially clothed. I feel like it's my job as a modern woman to fight back against this. I've lived this way for a year and had a few conflicts and gotten so stressed that my landlord is ending my lease. I'm trying to find a comforting place to live to recalibrate. But it's hard to feel safe anywhere when I can't speak up about things that bother me. I've also hit a plateau in therapy.

Esoterica, you might want to take a break from individual and instead try group therapy for women, or a women's support group. The theme of powerlessness and not having a right to what you need will come up in many guises. Sisterhood is powerful. You might not make any close friends in a group - in some groups, extracurricular contact is forbidden anyway - but you will find other voices supporting you and you will support them, and in this way, the internal critic slowly melts away - becomes extraneous and unimportant.

On the living situation - I refer you to the last section of the Serenity Prayer:
God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change,
The courage to change the things I can,
And the wisdom to know the difference.

Wisdom might have suggested that you were unlikely to "improve" that residence, and courage might have empowered you to find a better one without waiting for it to become a crisis.

Best of luck.

I repress my anger & frustration as much as I can and then I completely sketch out. My reactions are usually poorly timed & disproportionate to the situation.

Here's where the sometimes with anger and stereotypes for the African American women when angry, would fall under the term of "Angry Black Woman". When a black woman is angry, we're looked at always yelling, hand gestures all over the place, neck rolling – the bubble-gum-popping black girl who always has plenty to say, usually something nagging, loud and and will get confrontational about it.

I understand where you're coming from minus the parents. Be lucky you're not a black woman when addressed with anger. There will be a stereotype falling right behind it about black women.

Emmalionheart,

I know the stereotype you're referring to and the sense that the way black women express anger is somehow uncivilized and inappropriate. I just don't see how or why telling me that I should be glad I don't have it exactly like you is helpful when I get the sense we both are deeply afraid of occupying a stereotype.
I don't see women my age and race express anger at all. So, expressing anger seems to me like I'm risking people judging me as strange or unusual.

PennyFri, mine bottles up, too. I feel this pressure to think through a situation before I can express my anger. For example, when my parents would fight when I was a kid. I thought it was normal for parents to fight all the time, every evening, at dinner for virtually my entire childhood. I didn't know any better in spite of how upsetting it was. I thought they were doing me a favor. It took me 35 years to stop thinking this through.

Nodding and smiling politely when something is coming at them is considered the acceptable response. The impulse to conform to the group is stronger in women:
http://faculty.rhodes.edu/wetzel/223web ... %20gender/

To your question about where it goes, I think every woman on here knows where it goes...